FOCUS-JANUARY 2022

SYED WASEEM RIZWI & ALI AKBAR CHANGING DYNAMICS OF AN EVOLVING INDIA & ITS RELEVANCE December 7, 2021, English newspapers carried a news item in its inside pages “Ex-Chief of Shia Waqf Board in UP converts to Hinduism”. One paper said “Wasim Rizwi is now Jitendra Narayan Singh Tyagi!”. Different papers titled it differently. But none of the papers coined their title as Ex-Chief of Shia Waqf Board leaves Islam or Wasim Rizwi has left Islam. What is important is not what he has become as from 7th December 2021. But why has he changed the status quo? What really made him to embrace another faith is less important than what forced him to give up a faith he was born into and practiced it for close to 50 years? There must have been some very pertinent, disturbing and profound reasons, disturbing to Syed Wasim Rizwi, more than anybody else. Another day and another individual. An eminent Malayalam film director, 58 years old Ali Akbar, announced on 11th December 2021 that he and his wife were giving up Islam in protest against a section of social media users who allegedly indulged in jubilation over the death of Gen. Rawat and others in a helicopter crash. “I am not a Muslim from to-day onwards. I am an Indian”, Ali Akbar was reported to have remarked, while slamming those who put smiley emoticons or symbols or emojis below news reports related to the death of General Rawat. In a video posted on the social media Ali Akbar had remarked that he ‘could not stand with anti-nationals anymore’. Sources in the public space inform that Ali Akbar announced that he and his wife had decided to convert to Hinduism and chose to be named Rama Simhan. Irshad Manji is a Canadian citizen. She was born in Uganda to a Gujarathi Kutchi father and an Egyptian mother. She is an intellectual by her own right. She is a thinker and writer. When the family of Irshad Manji left Uganda on the orders of Idi Amin and migrated to Canada, her father enrolled the young, rather child, Irshad to a Christian Mission School. She was clearly ahead of her times. She would ask all kinds of questions to the nursery / kindergarten teachers, who would gladly answer all questions asked by child Irshad. At the end of the academic year, Irshad was adjudged the best student of the year in her class. Her academic performance got her father worried. He felt, with her interest in academics of the Christian institution, it may influence her religious moorings. So, he quickly got Irshad discharged from the Christian Mission School and got her enrolled into a Madrasa. Child Irshad was unaware of the dynamics of the change that her father had decided to get her into a Madrasa. As usual, she was on an exploratory trip. She kept asking questions to the Maulvi of the Madrasa, but was not getting answers. A month into the new school, the in-charge of the school, summoned Irshad’s father and asked him to take his ward from the Madrasa and to put her anywhere else. Confused father, enquired about the reasons of such a decision by the Madrasa authority. He was told “Your daughter asks too many questions that we cannot answer”. At a very young age of 22 having graduated from the University of British Columbia, she became a Press Secretary in the Ontario Provincial Government, followed by an appointment to the editorial board of “The Ottawa Citizen” a Canadian daily. With the freedom allowed by her parents young Irshad bloomed like a flower in a well tended garden. In 2002, she became an “In house writer” for University of Toronto. This appointment soon catapulted her to international fame, since at the Toronto University she embarked on her journey as a writer. She published many books on different aspects of her thoughts on Islam inspired by the Islamic tradition of IJTIHAAD. Although an Islamic tradition, IJTIHAAD denotes dissenting, reasoning and reinterpreting which implies exercising the freedom to ask questions-sometime even uncomfortable ones. Irshad Manji tells us, why we all need IJTIHAAD, doesn’t matter the source, appreciate its sweep. She often quotes an email she received from an American reader, Jim, a Christian, “The message of IJTIHAAD, of questioning, speaks to more than just Muslims. Throw away the confines of political correctness and discuss, debate, challenge and learn. A brown Muslim woman inspiring a white Christian man, isn’t freedom great?” he asks. Demanding reforms in the Islamic practices she asks some bold and uncomfortable questions like “why should I avoid examining the Quran and understanding it?” And she quotes chapter 13, verse 11 of the Quran “God does not change the condition of a people until they change what is inside themselves” while calling herself as a Muslim Pluralist. So we have likes of Waseem Rizwi, who is a Syed by designation, was the Chairman of Shia Central Waqf Board of Uttar Pradesh. This position he had held for over a decade till last year. Waseem, a college dropout is educated enough to articulate his thoughts in public space. He became a Corporator of Lucknow Municipal Corporation, having contested on a Samajwadi Party (SP) ticket. Over the years he fell out with the SP leadership. He has been a non-conforming Muslim with his off-beat views on many aspects of Muslim society. Not sure, if he is aware of the IJTIHAAD as articulated by Irshad Manji, but he was refreshingly different. He had publicly opposed Triple Talaq and had reportedly written a letter to PM Modi requesting him to shut down primary Madrasaas alleging that ISIS was funding it to keep Muslim children away from main stream education to make them radicals. He had also commented on sensitive issues like population with statements like “giving birth to children like animals”. However, his PIL to the Supreme Court about the removal of 26 verses from Quran, since they promote violence has been the most off beat, besides his book ‘Muhammed’ which depicted on its cover a man with a semi naked woman. Both these have greatly infuriated many clerics and Muslim outfits. With all these controversial stand he remained a Muslim. Instead of giving him fair hearing, he was ex-communicated besides he was threatened to ‘kill him / behead him’ etc. Rest, as the cliché goes, is public knowledge. Coming to Ali Akbar, being in the film fraternity he is certainly open minded and liberal. He has reportedly directed some 20 Malayalam films, having won the Kerala State Film Award for Best Debut Director in 1988. According to information in public space, he was a victim of child sexual abuse at a Madrasa in Meenangadi, Wayanad, by an Usthad (teacher), when he was only 8 years old. Politically he began with Aam Aadmi Party initially and then changed over to BJP. In an emotional FaceBook post, he had reportedly stated that ‘it was very difficult for the common man to understand the kind of humiliations and abuses being faced by a Muslim, from his own family and community, while working for the BJP’. While giving up Islam he, along with his wife, opted to become a Hindu and decided to name himself as Rama Simhan. Legend has it that “Rama Simhan, his brother Dayasimhan and wife Kamala, belonging to a prominent family in Malaparamba (Now in Malappuram District) were murdered on 2nd August 1947, allegedly after their conversion to Hinduism from Islam. Now coming to his reason, for having given-up Islam, is very simplistic. Because, a section of Muslims rejoiced the death of Gen Rawat & company, which is an anti-national act, cannot be a reason enough to give up a faith of 58 years! There must be far more profound reasons which had pushed him to the precipice and probably waiting for a nudge. The anti-national act of some Muslim men was probably the proverbial last straw. And its ‘enough’ he thought. ‘No, no more I will take it’, he must have imploded within. Ali Akbar owes it all Indians, who like to be known more as Indians than anything else, why he relinquished his name in favour of another name! The above two Indians, Waseem Rizwi & Ali Akbar, are not ordinary faceless Indians. If Rizwi had made noise in the public space for over a decade, apparently right noises, although the agenda driven media did not much help him circulate his sensible noises, Ali Akbar, has been a very prominent film personality of Malayalam celluloid world and incidentally also happened to be a BJP sympathizer, for whatever reasons, he feels comfortable with. Surely both the above gentlemen had their fan-following before and after their thoughtful migration from the, over 50 years, of social stock. Of course those –admirers, friends & well wishers- who looked at them as icons, before and after the change, may or may not be the same. In all probabilities it must have increased for obvious reasons. But why our media, both electronic and print, have not taken the initiative to interview them on the TV or in the press clubs!? What if such two gentlemen were to migrate from being Hindu and converted to either Christianity or Islam, would our media have kept quiet! Chances are an absolute capital NO. Paparazzi would have chased them everywhere to have a firsthand response to their breaking news questions! Writing a foreword to Irshad Manji’s book “The Trouble with Islam Today”, Prof Khaleel Mohammed, a Ph.d in Islamic Law from McGill University and a Professor at San Diego State University, so also an Imam, writes “Let us face a simple fact. I should hate Irshad Manji. She threatens my male authority and things about Islam that I wish were not true. She has a big mouth and fact upon fact to corroborate her analysis. She does not fear death. She is a lesbian. My madrassa training tells me that Allah hates gays and lesbians. I should really hate this woman. But then I look into my heart and engage my heart and mind, I come to a discomfiting conclusion. Irshad is telling the truth. And my God commands me to uphold the truth- which means that I have to side with her”. Aren’t they brave words! World need to celebrate both these lady and gentleman for their bravery. 2021, in the 75th year of India’s political freedom, India is at a cross road with relentless churning within the body politic of the nation. Media has a tremendous role to play with restraint to help Indians understand the socio-political quicksand that can endanger the very ethos of this great country. They must clearly have a vision of an India, which had a resplendent heritage of Co-operative co-existence, even before alien forces forced their way in, enjoyed, plundered, some stayed, some left with the loot for hundreds of years! But as former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi has asked in her epochal magnum opus “ETERNAL INDIA”, “What is that enabled our people to endure when so many other civilizations have crumbled? India has always accepted races, tribes, ways of thought and life, without demanding from them conformity and yet stamping on them the unmistakable mark of Indianness. Isn’t this diversity a marvel and even more so the fact that it has led not to division but to synthesis and unity? Equally wondrous is the vitality that has persisted stubbornly in the face of every kind of onslaught. But our vitality is not the obvious one of muscle flexing and aggrandizement. It is that more rooted in the profundities of Indian vitality and imperishableness”. According to her “the quality of ancient India that is most striking is the breadth of its vision, its capacity to feel at home in vast spaces, to think of great stretches of time and astronomical numbers. Obviously, rishis of the yore were not men of little minds dwelling in small lands. They reached out to the ever receding horizon of knowledge. Thus Indian imagination questioned easy certainties and finalities. Through the Indian history runs a thread of enquiry by sages, philosophers and kings. This fearless search into the unknown, into the inner depth of man’s being, gave birth to some of the most profound insights of the human race. The extra-ordinary daring of their speculation is revealed in the Vedic literature composed more than 3500 years ago”, she avers. So, is the evolving India destined to be at its rightful place in the comity of nations, where the entire biosphere looks at India for guidance to lead the humanity into the unforeseeable but turbulent future!!??